First Stand-Alone Partnering Conference Held in the USA to Attract the Biggest Names in Global Biotech for Two Days of Intense Networking

Carlsbad, CA. and Atlanta, GA., July 24, 2008 – With only two months until the start of BioPharm America™ in Atlanta, September 9-10, 2008, EBD Group today announced the conference’s program highlights covering a wide selection of important industry topics.
The eagerly anticipated BioPharm America partnering conference is expected to bring out many well known and respected names in the biotech industry and to be the most international stand-alone partnering event held on US soil.

Program highlights include:

• How is the Evolving Bio/Pharma Drug Development Landscape Affecting Transactions?
  As partnering continues to be the “it factor” in the bio / pharma industry, the key questions are: Can the buyers and sellers reconcile their very different project management cultures and deal requirements? How will these differences manifest themselves in the types of transactions that will be seen over the next 3-5 years? How will the recent fondness for expensive platform deals reveal the genius, folly or desperation of big pharma’s new R&D strategies?

   Dr. Bruce Robertson, Managing Director, H.I.G. Ventures will moderate a panel featuring  Rob Wills, Vice President Alliance Management, Johnson & Johnson; Dr. Christy Shaffer, President and CEO, Inspire Pharmaceuticals; and Sun Park, Vice President, Business Development, MedImmune, to examine these critical strategic issues and also discuss the role of investors, venture capital and private equity, in determining the partnering strategy of development-stage companies.

• The New Oncology Partnerships – Paradigms for Novel Therapies or More of the Same?
  Oncology has exhibited the most venture investment and deal flow over the last two years. With large mergers and acquisitions, such as Astellas’ acquisition of Agensys and BMS’s acquisition of Adnexus, the oncology company landscape has changed dramatically. This is giving rise to important new questions: How will these new big players organize their oncology portfolio? How will their alliance strategies change?

  On the other side of the spectrum there is an abundance of early stage companies exploring new technologies and pathways. From among these emerging players, which technologies are the most promising, and which companies have the potential to be the strongest partners?

  These important questions will be tackled in this not to be missed session that features Dr. Nils Debus, Senior Director, Global Business Development and Licensing, Bayer Schering; Dr. Aya Jakobovits, Executive Vice President, Head, Research and Development, Agensys - Astellas Group; and Dr. William P. Peters, Chairman and CEO, Adherex Technologies.   

• Novel Approaches to Treating Metabolic Diseases.
  Metabolic diseases such as obesity and Type 2 diabetes are growing and significant health problems for our society. These diseases represent large opportunities for biotech and pharma companies to develop and market novel drug therapies that address these debilitating disorders.
  A leading practicing physician will run a panel featuring Dr. Thomas Landh, Director, Strategy and Sourcing, Novo Nordisk; and Dr. Eric Tomlinson, President and CEO, Altea Therapeutics to generate important insights on the challenges and unmet medical needs of this growing patient population and provide an update from industry experts on novel therapeutic agents and drug delivery technologies designed to improve patient outcomes.

• Fighting Temptation: Why Bigger and Richer is not Always Better in Drug Development Partnerships.
  While many big pharma companies are in the midst of deconstructing and overhauling their drug discovery and development processes, many mid-tier pharma continue to demonstrate why they are more adept at managing pipelines and getting the most out of partnerships.

  This session will examine how these mid-tier companies can continue to maintain their edge in the face of big pharma’s increasingly generous deal terms that promise new partners and newly acquired companies that they can retain their autonomy.

• Exploring the Link Between Portfolio Strategy and Business Development.
  Moderated by Ben Bonifant, Vice President, Business Development, Campbell Alliance, joined by Dr. Ellen Strahlman, Vice President, Licensing, Worldwide Business Development, Pfizer; Dr. Manuel Litchman, Vice President and Head, Oncology Business Development and Licensing, Novartis; and Steven Xanthoudakis, Director, Licensing and External Research, Merck Frosst Canada, this session will explore the link between portfolio strategy and business development.

  It is reasonable to expect that a company’s business development activities should directly relate to—and support—its overall portfolio strategy. However, companies vary in the degree to which business development actively contributes to the portfolio strategy development, and often that strategy focuses on the commercial potential of the internal pipeline. Once pipeline gaps are identified, efforts shift to involve business development to help fill those gaps. If the two functions remain separated, business development can often find it difficult to align newly acquired assets with the investment priorities of the development pipeline. A successful approach incorporates considerations of business development opportunities simultaneously with asset prioritization decisions of the internal pipeline. In practice, aligning strategy with implementation can be easier said than done, and different companies apply different organizational approaches to achieving this goal.

• Antibodies - The Solution to Big Pharma's Problems?
  Antibodies have received intense interest during the past several years, and for good reason:

  • antibodies are the fastest growing drug class with close to one thousand antibody projects currently in research and/or clinical development;
  • antibody products and technologies are at the center of many biotech-pharma and biotech-biotech deal-making activities; and
  • antibodies have energized M&A activity as many small and big biotech companies with antibody technologies and pipelines have been acquired by big pharma at high valuations.

  Are these dynamics just a reflection of an overheated trend that will cool down in the not-too-distant future, or are we in a new era where streamlined 3rd, 4th and nth generation antibody therapies will come to dominate drug development pipelines, conquer new indications and provide widely available, efficacious and safe therapies?
  Moderated by Dr. Fritz Rudert, General Manager, FHR Consulting will be joined by Dr. Simon Moroney, CEO, Morphosys; Jette Asboe Lassen, Director of Business Development, Symphogen; Dr. Masamichi Koike, CEO and President, BioWa; and Dr. Margaret Karow, Executive Director, Research, Amgen, to discuss whether antibodies have actually come closer to being a “magic bullet” or are just another promising drug class among the rest.

• Translational Medicine - How do we Fund Novel, Breakthrough Research More Efficiently? Perhaps the greatest challenge facing modern medicine today is the reconciliation of the short-term, earnings driven requirements of today’s medical marketplace, with the risky, capital-intensive, decade-long process usually required to bring transformative medical ideas to fruition. This tension is felt intensely at the intersection between the early, most innovative ideas and the point where substantial funding is required to move them forward. The techniques and processes required to move past this hurdle are what the medical research community have come to refer to as translational medicine.

  Moderated by John P. Richert, Vice President Business & Technology Development Program, North Carolina Biotechnology Center, this session will bring together practitioners of translational medicine including universities that are focused on adding significant commercial value to a product prior to licensing; research institutions that are uniquely positioned to work in this nexus and companies that have been successful in crossing this hurdle.

• ABCs of Licensing. Young companies often look to that first licensing deal to create a revenue stream for the company. Most of these same companies are just not successful in "landing" that first deal. The reasons for such high failure rates can often be attributed to the fact that no one ever taught the young company the ABCs of Licensing.
  Although not a blueprint, there are some best practices that, if followed, are more likely to lead to a strong licensing arrangement for both the licensor and the licensee.
  Moderated by Diane Romza-Kutz, Chair, Life Sciences Practice Group, Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg LL, this interactive session will work through the steps to consider in securing a potential licensee's interest, being ready for a licensee to engage in negotiations and concluding a successful license arrangement.

EBD Group’s events are widely recognized as being the gold standard for highly productive bio-pharma partnering meetings. Like all EBD Group events, partnering at BioPharm America 2008 is powered by partneringONE™, the industry’s most advanced partnering system. partneringONE enables participants to efficiently mine a large pool of potential partners, and identify and pre-arrange private one-to-one meetings with dozens of company targets.

General registration for BioPharm America is now available at http://www.ebdgroup.com/bpa/registration.htm.  Early-bird registration with a discount of USD 200  is available until June 30. For more information about this global partnering event for the bio-pharma industry, including accommodation and program updates, please go to the event homepage at www.biopharmamerica.com.

Advance media registration for BioPharm America is now available online. Registration is complimentary for credentialed members of the media. To register, please visit http://www.ebdgroup.com/bpa/press_reg.htm.

About BioPharm America
BioPharm America is where biotech industry partnerships get started. Meet face-to-face with biotech and pharma executives from around the world to identify and enter strategic relationships. BioPharm America is the only partnering event in North America based on the same winning formula as EBD Group’s acclaimed European events BIO-Europe and BIO-Europe Spring®. BioPharm America is simply an unmatched opportunity for companies across the biotech value-chain to meet and do business.  For more information please visit www.biopharmamerica.com.

EBD Group’s conferences (run in collaboration with leading industry partners and international trade associations) include BIO-Europe, the world’s largest stand-alone life science partnering conference (organized with the support of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, BIO); BIO-Europe Spring®; BioPharm America™ (EBD’s new North American partnering event); and BioEquity Europe (co-organized with BioCentury Publications and BIO).

EBD’s sophisticated web-based partnering service, partneringONE™, is also used at numerous third-party events around the world. Outside of the conference format, EBD’s consultants can provide hands-on assistance for firms seeking to in- or out-license products and technologies. EBD Group has offices in the USA and Europe.

For more information visit www.ebdgroup.com

Contact:
Constantine Theodoropulos
EBD Group
+1 617.292.7319
ctheodoropulos@ebdgroup.com

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